


Questions

by saya4haji



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Alien anatomy, Character Study, F/F, curious Lena, prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24295996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saya4haji/pseuds/saya4haji
Summary: Lena has a lot of questions about the realities of Kara being an alien. Questions about her senses, species, culture, anatomy, her motivations, her personal history etc.Readers may suggest questions for Lena to ask.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 97
Kudos: 393





	1. Nails to shred steel

**Author's Note:**

> This will be an ongoing work I plan to dip into whenever I have time. Thank you to UndineB who came up with the idea of using short one shots to explore some of the many questions and thoughts we often have about Kara.
> 
> If like us, you have questions for Kara then please leave them in the comments. 
> 
> This first chapter was written on a phone at midnight so forgive any spelling errors. I will get round to editing and correcting it tomorrow after work.
> 
> Tags and rating may change as this story develops.

Lena examined the tan, strong hand that held her own. She absently played with the long, lithe fingers as she turned her girlfriends hand this way and that. Examining it from all angles. 

Unlike a human hand, there seemed to be less texture to her skin. Less pores, less wrinkles, less defined palmar flexion creases and less variation in skin tone. How Lena never noticed Kara was an alien, just from her hands, she will never know. Her hands are inhumanely smooth and her skin, while not soft in the traditional sense, holds a silky quality that defies human tactile response. 

Flipping her hand, Lena examines the perfect nails. Kara's nail beds are perfectly squared off but her nails look smaller than a humans and more uniform in size across all of her fingers. The nails themselves look thinner than a humans and as Lena presses on them she sees no change in colour or cuticle blood flow. How odd.

The question pops into Lena's head before she can stop it, "Kara, why do your nails look different?"

Lena feels herself blush at having blurted the question out, but she recovers quickly. Her curious green eyes meet indulgent blue orbs which seem to laugh and smile at her all at once.  
. 

Kara hums softly and her eyes flicker back to the Disney movie that had failed to hold Lena's attention. The story of a chinese warrior had nothing on absently examining her girlfriend.

Kara smiles softly, "Kryptonian nails grow much, much slower than human nails. If it weren't for the yellow sun they would likely be constantly breaking too. On Krypton we used a special gel to harden them because our forced evolution was slowly causing them to become a redundant characteristic. Like humanity, they are a remnant of a more primitive ancestor that had use for claws and nails. Kryptonians, as an older species and from using the matrix, had slowly been breeding them out as an adapted characteristic. Our nails had become smaller, more uniform, thinner and grew more slowly. I had even heard of cases of Kryptonians being born without nails or with even smaller ones than I have. I am just grateful the matrix and my House didn't push my evolution that far, it would have been a pain gluing false nails onto my fingers to blend in here with humanity."

Lena nods along as Kara explains. So many aspects of Kryptonian anatomy look similar to humanity that on casual inspection and in daily life, no one realises how different Kara is. Yet, there seems to be a thousand little tells, and Lena is loving learning each and every one. 

As Lena lifts Kara's hands to examine the nails in question, she lightly kisses the tips of her girlfriends fingers. 

"I love your alien nails," Lena murmers into Kara's hand. 

This has become a ritual of sorts. Lena uncovering small details and differences about Kara and loving her all the more for them. 

Kara snorts and with a deep blush she retorts in a mischieviou voice, " oh yes girlfriend of mine, I wonder why you love my short, slow growing nails?"

Lena blushes violently at the innuendo. Her cheeks turn from ghostly white to pale pink before her mind recovers enough to sarcastically mutter, " Yes, how convenient my female, pansexual, Alien lover has naturally short nails."

Kara rolls her eyes at Lena and returns her attention to the film. 

Lena's retort replays in her own mind and she can't help the question that it invariably conjures, "Hey Kara, how do you cut your nails?"

Lena knows intellectually that every part of Kara is stronger and tougher. One of superman's hairs is suspended in Metropolis museum, holding up a 1 tonne weight. Lena can only imagine what these delicate little nails on Kara's hands could do. A human can scratch flesh with their nails, but Kara could surely shred steel. It is with that thought that Lena is once again immensely greatful for Kara's conscientious and gentle treatment of Lena during their love making and for the fact she appears to have alienly short nails. 

Kara huffs, "I see I won't get any peace to watch the end of Mulan again until your curiosity is sated?" 

Kara cocks a brow in mock acusation, and Lena ducks her head slightly abashed. 

Kara reaches across with her free hand to cup Lena's face in a gentle and reassuring gesture. Her thumb tenderly caressing the faintly blushing cheek.

"Hey, it's fine. I love your curiosity," Kara reassures. 

Lena raises her eyes to watch Kara hopefully and with renewed curiosity.

Kara sighs, "Well, when I first arrived on earth I didn't really think about it until my nails had grown a bit. About a year and a half after I got here. Like Kal-El, when his powers started manifesting in his early teens, I did what many teenagers do: I bit my nails. Our teeth are strong enough, and we have enough strength to bite our own nails off. Needless to say, that was a messy affair and was rather unsightly. When I was 16 and getting a bit more concerned about silly things like human vanity I plucked up the courage to ask Kal for help. It turned out that he had designed a remedy himself after he discovered the Fortress. He had the Kal-ex fashion nail clippers with a thin green kryptonite coating on the edges."

"What!?" Lena gasped in horror. Her mind waring between being angry at Clark for again failing to think of Kara's needs in as simple a way as cutting her nails before she asked him about it, and being horrified that he would give her a Kryptonite cutting implement as a solution. 

Kara smiles and pats her knee reasurribgly, "shh, calm down. It is a very thin coating. Nowhere near enough Kryptonite to hurt me or be usable in any way if it fell into the wrong hands, but just enough to cut through my nails" 

Lena sighs in relief. 

"Oh, ok. I suppose that makes sense. I had never really considered how difficult something as mundane as cutting your nails would be Kara."

Kara shrugged easily, "It is just part of life now here on earth. Now, can we finish Mulan?"

Lena rolled her eyes and snuggled closer to her girlfriend . Her hand still cradled in her pale hands and being absently toyed with.


	2. Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena asks about Kara's sense of touch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sort of continuation of the last chapter. Thank you to everyone who commented. I have lots of ideas for questions now and for ways of answering them. The five senses, heat vision, flight, religion and Kryptonian society will all be getting addressed...eventually.

As Mulan ended Kara sighed happily and set aside her now empty bowl of popcorn.

The credits rolled but neither Kara nor Lena seem in any hurry to move from their current position of contentedness.

Lena is snuggled comfortably into Kara’s side and her girlfriend’s arm is wrapped in a Koala-esque cuddle, not unlike a small child greedily snuggling her favourite plushie.

Both women are content and Kara slumps so her head rests gently on top of Lena’s raven haired grown. Her hair a silky pillow smelling softly of Jasmine and the inherent musk that is just Lena.

Lena absently toys with Kara’s hand still. The tan skin highlighting Lena’s paleness and the strong, muscled phalanges and broad palms contrasting with Lena’s delicately thin, long hands.

Lena strokes Kara’s hand, mesmerised by the smooth texture. Lena can’t help but draw the comparison with steel as the media does. Kara’s flesh is almost poreless and wrinkle free. There is no hint of even the fairest or finest hairs on the backs of her fingers and the usual signs of wear and tear such as the palmar flexion creases on the palm are faintly visible. Kara’s skin is a solid deep, radiant tan colour as though applied by the finest artist or at the least by a high-priced spray tanner. Her skin is like tan, warm steel. There is some give but when Lena exerts too much pressure it reminds her of adaptive liquid armour that she has been working on in her lab, the skin suddenly tenses and hardens.

Lena strokes the hand that holds her heart and laces their fingers together before squeezing tightly. Too tight for a human but Kara merely hums in amusement, “What are you thinking about so hard?” she mumbles.

Lena’s brows furrow in thought as she tries to dredge together all the disparate ideas that were floating in her mind as she toyed with Kara’s hand.

“I was wondering, what does this feel like to you?” Lena asks as she holds forth their joined hands and gives an explanatory squeeze. Her thumb absently running across the back of Kara’s hand in a tender caress.

Kara sits forward and shuffles further down the coach so that she is snuggled beside Lena on a more equal level, able to see her girlfriend’s eyes which have lightened to delicate chartreuse in her gentle quest for knowledge.

Kara lifts their joined hands to eye level and her crinkle appears as her eyes darken to a light Bangor-blue slate in consideration. Kara’s eyes narrow and her brows crease as she examines their hands, as though staring at them will enable her to better articulate what she feels.

“It feels like dissonance. Simultaneously, wonderful, bizarre and taboo. Holding hands wasn’t really done on Krypton. I vaguely remember my parents doing it once or twice at home. One of those times was when I was seriously ill with Kandorian flu. I remember thinking I must have hallucinated my mother reaching out to grasp my father’s hand as they sat by my bedside. Later, when I asked my mother about it, she became terribly embarrassed and told me that in times of high stress it is only natural to reach out to those we cherish. I was quite shocked, because even by age eleven I had come to know that the casual touches of family to comfort and guide a child were no longer something appropriate for me. The idea that I would ever be shaken that much that I would seek casual contact was frightening and a little bit scandalous.”

Kara smiles softly, here eyes darting between Lena’s intense emerald gaze and their joined hands.

Lena nods fractionally but doesn’t try to remove her hand from Kara’s. “I remember you telling me about the social etiquette on Krypton. How independence and body sovereignty bordered on absolute isolationism to prevent distractions from intellectual pursuits. It was ingrained culturally and socially. From a psychological point of view I am still in awe that Kryptonians never had, or evolved out of, touch starvation. That isn’t really what I meant though, I meant how does it feel? Physically?”

Kara’s eyes return to their joined hands and her gaze becomes unfocused as she becomes lost in recollections of the distant past.

“It feels…different. I imagine my sense of touch was a lot like a human’s when I was on Krypton, but when I arrived on earth it changed so drastically and so fast. I know intellectually that touch and tactile input here on earth is vastly different to how it felt on Krypton. It’s both more and less. Touch for me now is simultaneously hypersensitive and hyposensitive. When I hold your hand I feel every fractional shift in your grasp and every whirl of your fingerprints against my flesh, but at the same time I know I have lost some perception of touch. Your hand doesn’t feel like it is exerting any more ‘weight’ on my hand than if I dropped a boulder on it. The pressure might be different on an intellectual level but the ‘weight’…I don’t feel resistance like I used to. “

Lena’s eyes have flickered back and forth as she listens to Kara and she tries to make sense of Kara’s explanation. An explanation that Kara herself seems to struggle to find the words for.

“Does Kal-El have the same disparity?” Lena asks hesitantly, knowing that Kal-El is always an unpredictable topic with Kara.

Kara shakes her head definitively and immediately however, “No. Kal, for all that he is Kryptonian, and was raised human, is pretty much unique. He has no memories or frame of reference for when he didn’t have powers. Sure, some of them didn’t become an issue or even manifest fully until he was a teenager, but he has always been invulnerable to a degree. His sense of touch and tactile response as it is now, is what he has always known. I hypothesised that his brain adapted as a baby to ignore a lot of the information his sense of touch sent him and so he doesn’t notice the things I do. Most telling is the fact that Kal-El says he feels…bereft, when he is exposed to red light or Kryptonite. He feels like his skin is a strange mix of numb and tender because he feels so much less. At the same time he says he perceives pressure and force so much more that it is too much. In contrast, when I lose my powers I feel…normal, just for a little while. Vulnerable and weak sure, because I have spent over a decade with powers but there is something nostalgic and comforting for me about not having my powers. For Kal it is more akin to a form of torture, to sensory deprivation.”

Lena’s eyes have widened as she listen to Kara struggle to explain. The complexity of her girlfriends anatomy and the struggles she has had to endure, never cease to amaze her. Lena knows she is rather good at adapting to change, to pivoting and learning to carry on when the world throws her curve balls. Yet, the idea of having her very senses so vastly changed and having to relearn to interact with the world on such a basic and fundamental level? Lena is in awe of Kara’s grace and her fortitude.

Lena lifts their joined hands and untangling them she turns Kara’s palm face up so she can gently stroke it. The smooth texture and alien fingerprints which match none of the four types of humans is captivating.

“Can you explain what you meant by hypersensitive and hyposensitive at the same time? Those terms would seem mutually exclusive,” Lena murmurs as she strokes Kara’s palm and watches her girlfriends eyes flutter shut.

Kara sighs sleepily and for a moment Lena thinks that she has fallen asleep but eventually Kara begins to explain, “When I first arrived on earth I felt everything too much. Wearing clothes hurt. The fabric felt so coarse that it was painful or so soft that it tickled. Changes in fabric, in patterns, or mistakes from the manufacturing process of the clothes would be distracting. Even now I prefer to wear just one fabric at a time, 100% cotton shirts, trousers and cardigans. People joke about my dress sense but it is just more comfortable. Clothes with patterns or weaves that change direction are too distracting too. Take for example this sleep shirt,” Kara gestures to herself even with her eyes closed, “the puppy design is printed on with dyes so there is no change in material or distracting embellishments, yet if I focus too much I can feel the loose thread at the back of the neck and where the cotton was ‘snagged’ when being produced. There is a small bump, a missed stitch about a quarter of the way down the back. There is also a pinprick sized hole under the right armpit. When I focus I can feel them and they become distracting.”

Lena’s hands have stopped caressing Kara’s hand as she stares in horrified wonder, “How do you cope with so much input? Doesn’t it drive you mad?”

Kara smiles and opens her eyes to look at Lena reassuringly, “I learned pretty quick to block out most of the input. It almost did drive me mad in the first few weeks I was here and Kal was of no use. His baby brain had been filtering out all the input instinctively and so he doesn’t struggle like I do. I still have to make a conscious effort sometimes to focus on other sensations or other thoughts. More pleasant thoughts.” Kara whispers huskily as her hands flip and reach forward to grasp Lena’s cool, nimble fingers.

Kara’s hands run across Lena’s hands in a sensual massage.

Lena luxuriates in the feel of Kara’s warm hands and a minute tremor races up her spine at the pleasant touch.

“Are you trying to distract me, or yourself Kara Danvers?” Lena whispers.

Kara’s smile turns flirtatious and a little mischievous. Lena adores this side of Kara which only she gets to see.

“Well Miss Luthor, I was about to offer an explanation and a demonstration of my hypersensitivity?” Kara husks.

Lena laughs lowly, her eyes darkening to forest green and her heartbeat increasing.

“Please do,” Lena whispers. Her tone might verge on begging but that would be ridiculous because Luthor’s don’t beg.

Kara turns Lena’s hands face up and her warm hands engulf hers, sweeping back and forth, drawing invisible patterns and kneading the fine muscles between her nubile fingers and joints.

“I can feel every pore and every crease in your hands Lena. I can feel the whirl of your fingerprints in such detail that I could sketch them just from touch. I can feel the healed callouses on your fingers from when you were more practical engineer than powerful CEO. I can feel the slight flattening of the lymph and muscle beneath your fingertips from where you constantly tap at your computer keyboard and I can feel the indentation of your pen in your pointer finger and thumb. I can feel every single phalanx bone, I can count your 29 bones, feel the flex of 34 muscles and the rushing blood in your veins and arteries. I can feel your blood pressure rise Lena as you listen to my voice and feel me caress your hands, tantalize your fingers and tease your pulse. If I focus hard enough, I can even feel the faint pulse of your three major nerves as the neurons transmit messages as I caress your skin. I can feel the indentation and flaws in your perfect French manicure and I can feel you tremble for me Lena.”

Lena’s breathing has become short as Kara toys with her hands and with each word she leans forward; one slow inch at a time until they are barely a breath apart. Lena gazes up at Kara and her eyes can’t seem to decide whether to watch Kara’s own blue orbs or to examine the delicate cupids bow of her luscious pink lips.

“I – I think we should explore your other senses of touch Kara,” Lena husks.

Kara’s chest rumbles with a suppressed laugh as she ducks her head and her nose grazes Lena’s, “Oh yes? Have you any suggestions?”

Lena’s eyes are blown wide and her dark pupils engulf the green of her irises, “Oh I have a few suggestions,” she husks before diving forward to capture Kara’s lips with her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hello and chat in the comments. Oh and Kudos!


	3. The eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena asks about Kara's vision and her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was probably the hardest chapter to write. I hold my hands up and admit it is full of pseudo-science and comic book science which is vague and lacking real explanation. I have done my best though to try and answer Lena's questions about Kara's eyes and her vision. This chapter was hard because I had to discuss colour, heat vision, x-rays etc. and my background is not in physics which I got my GCSE in many years ago and never looked at again. Please forgive my very basic understanding and often outright mutilation of physics, colour spectrums and light waves. 
> 
> I tried to build my headcannon with some form of logic, reference to the greater DC universe and past Supergirl episodes. There is also a few funny lines I hope to try and take the edge off. 
> 
> My GF and UndineB are constantly taking the piss because these oneshots seem to have developed sexy undertones or these big conversations happen in bed or when Kara/Lena are being very cute together. 
> 
> Anyway, ENJOY!

Kara stretches her arms wide, working an phantom stiffness from her frame, and feels Lena’s warm weight shift grumpily upon her chest and snuggle closer. The morning rays of light filtering in through gauzy curtains catch on Kara’s golden skin and like a plant drawn to sunlight she angles her face towards the gentle bright light.

Lena grumbles and tightens her grip around Kara, huffing a breath, “Stupid sun. Stupid alien phototropism. It’s too early.”

Kara giggles happily, her arms falling to encompass her beloved.

“You’re the one who had the gauzy inner curtains put up. I told you that you could keep the blackout blinds,” Kara whispers fondly.

The playful argument is an old one now after weeks of sharing a bed. Lena had noticed how Kara’s own bedroom had no covering but for a flimsy translucent drape. Kara had admitted she loved waking up to the warmth and light of Sol. The light energizes her for the day and waking up in darkness had always reminded her of the vague, half sleeping memories of waking in the pod while stuck semi-conscious in deep space. Lena had promptly replaced her blackout blinds with the most expensive sheer curtain she could find that obscured the view into her bedroom but allowed an ungodly amount of sunlight to filter in.

Lena grumbles again and tilts her face up to place a delicate morning kiss on Kara’s lips before sarcastically replying, “I just had to fall for a morning person, and one who is an actual ray of sunshine. It must be Karmic justice. A joke of the universe to punish me by waking me up on my rare days off at stupid o’clock in the morning.”

Kara can’t help but huff a laugh at Lena’s grouchy morning complaints. She has been enamoured to discover that despite how early Lena gets up to work, she is most assuredly not a morning person: at least not before a shower and two very large cups of black coffee. Kara thinks she is a bit like a grumpy cat that has to be coaxed and stroked just right to get it to become a big ball of cuddly fluff, but she will never tell Lena that.

Kara strokes Lena’s dark, thick locks that have become tangled and messy in sleep; and from other more fun activities before sleep. This version of Lena is one of Kara’s favourites: Laying across Kara on a day off. A sleepy Lena with messy hair, the absence of her perfect makeup and all the emotional armour and masks she uses in public. Here, Lena’s face seems young, more animated and less guarded. Her usually piercing and cautious Emerald eyes are softened by sleepiness to a light mint colour. Kara feels herself falling into those half-lidded eyes. Their haunting colour so beautiful to Kara, so Alien.

Lena frowns slightly, her mouth turning into a disgruntled pout, “You’re staring Miss Danvers,” Lena teases before abruptly yawning and closing her eyes.

Kara shakes herself from her staring, “Sorry, I just got lost in your eyes.”

Lena snorts and smiles at Kara while slapping her chest lightly in exasperation, “Uh, so cheesy. You need to work on your flirting Kara. Have you been watching the Hallmark channel again?”

Kara blushes delicately and rolls her eyes, “I wasn’t flirting, I was being serious. Your eyes still catch me off guard sometimes when I can look at them so close up and not have to worry about being creepy doing it.”

Lena’s brows furrow, “I know my eyes are a bit weird. It was my one feature that Lillian ever came close to complimenting. She used to say they were striking, my poisonous green Irish eyes. One of the few things I have from my birth mother.”

Kara tightens her hold on Lena with her right arm, curling her more into her body in an instinctive protective gesture. She bends forward to hover over Lena and her left hand strokes the delicate skin beneath Lena’s eye.

“Lillian is a bitch.” Kara says with quiet certainty. Lena’s breath catches at Kara’s uncharacteristic swearing and the primal surge of love she feels as Kara defends her.

“Your eyes aren’t just striking, they’re gorgeous. They’re not poisonous. When you are mad or passionate, they are like glittering Emeralds or Jades: Hard, beautiful and precious. But when you tell me you love me or you laugh, they lighten to mint and sometimes if the light catches them right a stunning chartreuse. I love your eyes Lena. Human’s say they are the windows to the soul and when I look into your eyes, I can understand the sentiment. Your eyes are beautiful, just like your soul.”

Lena can feel the silly moisture of tears that has built in her eyes and the lump in her throat. It is times like these that Lena feels so exposed with Kara, naked and vulnerable in a way that has nothing to do with a lack of clothes. Kara defends her with passion and, for some reason Lena still struggles to fathom, she believes she is a good person, nay a beautiful person.

Lena struggles to find something to say, but lacking the words to match Kara’s impromptu poetry she attempts to deflect with her old faithful sarcasm, “Huh, you really have been paying attention to my eyes, and seem to have been memorising a colour wheel too: Emerald, Jade, mint, chartreuse? Very specific.”

Kara shifts uncomfortably and lies back on the bed, as she grimaces, “It was a paint chart actually.”

Lena’s smile faulters, “What?”

Kara fidgets under the covers and attempts to move back from Lena but she grips Kara’s arm tightly, fighting any separation of their bodies. Kara sighs, “I learned colours from a paint chart that Alex brought back from the local hardware store in Midvale when I was thirteen.”

“You mean you learned the earth names for them?” Lena asks hesitantly as she feels as though she is missing something.

Kara shakes her head minutely, “No, I mean I learned colours in general and the names of different shades. I grew up on Krypton Lena, my species evolved for all of our history under a red sun.”

Lena’s mouth opens and closes as her mind dissects the implications of that statement. Everyone knows Krypton orbits a red sun. It is like saying the sky is blue, but Lena had never really stopped to consider what that meant before, “That means you saw everything in your natural environment in red light, your perception of colour would be reduced to red and black?”

Kara nods, “Yes. I didn’t know about different colours until I studied them as part of my education for the Science Guild when I was four. Light wavelengths, refraction, rays and colour were a rudimentary class that had to be taught because scientific investigations in labs looking at chemicals, complex electricals and biological experimentation were done under 380 to 740 nanometer wavelengths to allow broader colour perception, even then we only dealt with the basic ideas of colour for labelling and identification purposes in scientific endeavour. Our categorising of colour by name was generally limited into twelve basic groups: White, cream, yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, green, blue, brown, grey and black. We didn’t bother with naming the varieties of shades that humanity does because we didn’t need that level of precision, if we did then we would take a nanometere reading and refer to the colour by wavelength.”

Lena gapes as she tries to grasp a world where only red and black could be perceived, “But surely in your homes you would have full spectrum lighting?”

Kara frowns at Lena, “Why would we? Kryptonians evolved under red light. It was what we as a species knew for all of our existence. Our fashion, interactions with each other, perceptions of the very world were anchored in seeing the world in red light. I saw that documentary that the Discovery Channel did where they ‘recreated’ a Kryptonian home using some insights Kal gave them, but the whole thing was wrong. They didn’t shoot it in red light, the actors wore multi coloured robes and the furniture had coloured patterns on it. That would have been totally redundant on Krypton, everything was red or black to our perception. Sure, some dyes were actually different colours, but we didn’t know that until we examined them under full spectrum light or with a colour detection RGB sensor. I didn’t even know my mother’s favourite robe was blue until I saw her hologram here on earth! We used far more stylization in our design and every aspect of an object or persons clothing held symbolism. We didn’t use colour the way humans do.”

Lena’s mind is in the midst of a total reorganization of reality as she reflects on the Kryptonian clothing Kara had drawn examples of and the landscape painting in Kara’s living room. The fact the figures all wore black clothes, with red highlights like capes, boots, belts and their House crests now makes so much more sense. Lena had thought Kara’s stark paintings in reds and blacks were an artistic choice or symbolic of the pain she still feels for her lost home, yet none of that is true. Kara’s paintings and drawings are all faithful renditions of how she remembers her home through her own eyes.

Her eyes! Lena’s mind contorts on the implications of a species evolving under a red sun.

“If Kryptonians evolved under a red sun then how would their eyes have the necessary receptors to see colour? There would be no point in the adaptation.”

Kara laughs more freely this time, “I wondered how long it would be before you asked. Come on Lena, think about it. How do I see in colour, have x-ray vision, heat vision and even microscopic and binocular vision?”

Lena’s brows furrow before she sighs in realisation and she flops bonelessly back against Kara, “This is one of those advanced changes that Kryptonians engineered isn’t it? There is no way your eye could have naturally evolved to perceive colour or any of the other stuff it does. It’s just too complex.”

Kara smiles softly, “You’re mostly right. Kryptonians started as plains hunter gatherers and our world was always much harsher than earth. Red light isn’t conducive to a wide variety of plant life and we always had violent extremes of weather. We naturally did evolve our superior eyesight to a large degree in response to environmental need. We naturally have two lenses inside our eye, a thicker fovea and more richly packed receptors in our retina which is also larger. We also don’t have the singular optic nerve that humans make do with, our eye capsule has a semi-circular network of optic nerves at the back of our eyes allowing for more dense neuro and receptor message flow. When we began engineering our species the Science Guild did tweak our eyes a bit to improve our microscopic and binocular vision even more. The biggest change however came when the High Council approved the Science Guilds request to change the species as a whole in order that we had the receptor to perceive colour from anywhere between 10 to 1000 nm. The argument was that for scientific purposes and military advantage, being able to identify colours naturally without having to wear special holo-tagging goggles or use specialist colour detection equipment like colour sensors would make scientific experimentation quicker and military units more effective. A number of our labs were already using ‘visible light’ in conjunction with these artificial augments and we had built the first Kal-Ex that did many of our automated and monitoring duties with the ability to perceive the 12 basic colours. Th council approved the changes but Kryptonians didn’t suddenly change all of their House lights to ‘visible light.’ To those who still held some religious reverence that would have been sacrilegious to Rao and our cultural ideas of beauty, design and life was all modelled on our evolved perceptions under red light.”

Lena’s mind struggles. Seeing the world in all of its colourful glory has perhaps made her biased and she is trying to impose her own human culture, but she can’t fathom the idea of choosing to live in a world of black and red when you work in labs with full colour at least some of the time.

“What was it like when you first came to earth?” Lena asks hesitantly as her hand begins to soothingly rub Kara’s abs beneath the covers.

Kara lets out a gust of breath, “Overwhelming. I had been in some of the labs and experimented with or worked in ‘visible light’ but that was only for a few hours at a time and in very controlled conditions. Earth was overwhelming when I first arrived. Absolutely everything is a riot of colour here, bright clothes, the sky, the plants, even people are more colourful. It was overwhelming and for all the similarities that humans have with Kryptonians in appearance, you all seemed very alien to me in the beginning just because of your skin tones, your hair and your eyes. People are colourful. On Krypton we had black and red people. Everyone’s eyes were black and everyone’s hair was black or off red. It actually hurt a bit seeing so much colour, I took to waring these red tinted glasses that Jeramiah made for me for part of the day in the first few weeks.”

Lena wishes desperately that she could reach back in time and comfort the lost little alien girl that Kara was. The number of challenges she had when she first arrived always seems to get bigger every time Lena probes a little deeper into her girlfriend’s past. How Kara is as well adjusted and wonderful as she is, she will never understand.

A mischievous thought strikes Lena then and she asks in an innocent voice, “So red and black were kind of the base line for beauty on Krypton then?”

Kara tilts to watch Lena suspiciously, “Well, I suppose.As far as Red and black was the expected colour palette for people. It is what we all knew for most of our lives, it is what we perceived and Rao was our god.”

Lena nods seriously, “That partially solves the mystery then. You love me for my luscious red lips and jet black hair. I know, I know. I must be gorgeous by Kryptonian standards.”

Kara chokes on air and laughs riotously, “So humble Miss Luthor.”

Lena preens and Kara smiles indulgently as her fingers trace patterns across Lena’s pale skin, “I’ll admit your pale skin would have glowed a deep beautiful red on Krypton, and your green eyes would have been jet black. Between that and your hair and lips, you would have been a beauty befitting Rao himself-“ Kara ruminates before pausing at Lena’s cocky smirk, -“but that would have been lost on Kryptonians anyway. We evolved past the vanity of caring what package a person came in long ago.”

Lena shoots Kara daggers, “Oh so I could be a five hundred pound gorilla and you would still love me?” Lena snarks.

Kara leans over, “So long as you were still my generous, kind and loving Lena, then yes. Although I must admit, in a very human way, I do appreciate your elemental eyes with their hypnotic, alien green, your luscious lips…and other redeeming features.” Kara trails her hands across Lena’s curvaceous outline over the light duvet cover and her thigh insinuates itself between Lena’s legs to rub tantalisingly against her lace underwear.

Lena groans, “How very primitive of you Miss Zor-El.”

Kara laughs, “Coming from a xenophile I’ll take that with a pinch of salt.”

Lena laughs again, immediately cooling any of the sexier thoughts she had been contemplating, “Oh gods. Can you imagine my mother and brother if I said that to them? Lillian would lose her shit worse than when I came out as gay, and Lex certainly wouldn’t support this. ‘Hi, I’m Lena Luthor and I’m a xenophile with a fetish for xenophilia.’”

Both women dissolve into giggles and hysterical tears trickle across their cheeks.

Eventually they calm down enough that Lena’s mind is able to really consider everything Kara has told her so far, “Hey Kara, you said the manipulation of your species eyes gave them the ability to perceive 10 to 1000nm, wouldn’t that mean you can see into the UV and IR spectrums?”

Kara sighs, “I knew you would catch that bit. It is a bit more complicated than that. You remember I said we have more than one optic nerve?” Lena nods definitively.

“Well the reason for that is because seeing such a broad range of colours is complicated and quite frankly overwhelming, even for a Kryptonian brain. My father and my teaching pod made some allusions to the early experiments with altering Kryptonian eyes going badly wrong. Between incorporating Tamaranian gene sequences as a basis to make the cone receptors and the surge in input to the brain it was a bit of a disaster apparently. Too much input. Eventually the council got around the issue by separating the upper and lower ends of the spectrum. To see into the UV and IR isn’t passive, its active. I have to concentrate on it, a bit like deciding to relax your sphincter muscle or holding your breath. I can sort of switch on the feedback from the specific cone receptors for UV or IR by ‘pushing’ together a nerve connection in my eyes. It takes effort and thought though. I can’t hold it for very long without getting a headache.”

Lena is enraptured, “What does the world look like when you do?”

Kara hesitates and scrunches up her nose, “This feels like trying to explain sound to a deaf person. UV is suppose is like seeing everything washed out in a confusing mix of indigos of different shades. Powerlines were terrifying the first time I saw them because they look like these confined explosions of light and some things look really beautiful like the foliage of some birds that is bland usually is like electric neon yellows, reds and purples when I look into the UV. Infrared is useful because it lets me track heat signatures and people. Everything gives off some ambient heat so in IR my vision is sort of shadowy. Think of it like a world coloured in according to a monochrome pallet. Black is super cold, white is super hot and everything in between, but there is like gradients and smudges everywhere. It was useful in the labs back on Krypton to keep track of exothermic and endothermic reactions and for the Geology Guild to monitor the geothermal activity of Krypton.”

Lena looks across her bedroom and once again has a moment of wonder. How must the world look to Kara. All the colours she isn’t used to, the ability to see into the UV and IR. The world must be overwhelming sometimes but also fascinating. A small jealousy wells in Lena as she envies the ability to see the world so differently. To learn so much with but a glimpse. Lena centres herself and before the jealousy can grow she snuffs it out.

Lena orientates her thoughts, “So I get that you can see down to 10nm and that would let you perceive x-rays but that doesn’t explain how you can x-ray things or how your heat vision works?”

Kara shifts and rolls her eyes at Lena’s persistence, “Neither of those are things that Kryptonian science intended for. They are actually more like accidental side effects that Kryptonians get when exposed to the radiation of a yellow sun and the photonucleic effect. To be honest, I have never really tested it myself and I am just repeating the basic explanation Kal-El gave me when I got here on earth. He says that the hologram of Jor-El he has and his Kal-Ex hypothesised this likely explanation. From what they could tell Kryptonians are natural solar radiation batteries on earth. Our bodies absorb and store solar radiation as part of the photoneucleic effect but because of the adaptations that our bodies have undergone on a cellular level and the structural changes our genetic engineering created, we can sort of convert that solar energy and emit it from our bodies in different wavelengths. I personally blame the Tamaranian gene sequences there. When I use X-ray vision I am actually emitting x-rays and my eyes are just perceiving them because that is how they are adapted. The heat vision though is essentially created by converting solar radiation to a form of intense infrared energy. Our bodies are literally invulnerable under a yellow sun but heat energy does hurt us at high enough temperatures and when we build it up inside our body it naturally seeks an exit point. The most vulnerable part of our body and simplest exit point being our eyes. People think our heat vision is a controlled beam but its more like a violent expulsion of infrared heat. Our eyes glow because we are literally overheating our nerves and cells, our eyes glow like a tungsten wire that has been heated up. It is only the fact of our invulnerability that our eyes aren’t destroyed when we use heat vision. When we do use it, the heat becomes visible because it is literally so hot that we are turning the nitrogen in the air into plasma in a tight area as the infrared heat escapes our eyes. Our heat vision is one of our strongest but also most dangerous powers. We are literally transferring solar radiation into pure heat energy, building it to such a critical level in our body that it is eventually destructive enough to create a small break in the thinnest part of our pupil and breech outwards. It is one of the few things that hurts and takes so much energy to use that if we do so for too long then we can effectively deplete our solar energy and render ourselves powerless for a time. It’s also why our heat vision is one of the few weapons we have that can do serious damage to fellow Kryptonians. When I used it on Uncle Non I aimed for his eyes and I was essentially gambling that I had more solar radiation in my body that I could create a hotter heat beam and still maintain my invulnerability for longer than he could. He had been on the run with Aunt Astra, living in bunkers and staying out of sight. I am always in the sun, always absorbing solar radiation. It was close, but I burned his eyes out. I had more solar radiation to draw on so I burned his eyes out once his was depleted to the point he couldn’t maintain the invulnerability needed for heat vision.”

Kara swallows convulsively, the image of her Uncle, his black hollowed out eyes flashing in her mind. She feels nausea sweep over her. The horror of her actions swamping her.

A gentle shushing pulls Kara back to reality and she realises that during her flashback Lena has sat up and pulled Kara into a strong embrace. Muttering words of comfort and love as she tries to pull Kara back from the edge of a panic attack.

Kara swallows down her nausea and scrunches up her eyes as she buries her head into Lena’s sternum, “Can we not talk about this anymore?” Kara whispers brokenly.

“Shh, honey. Lay down. No more questions. It’s early. Let’s go back to sleep.” Lena replies.

Kara wants to tell Lena there is no chance she will sleep now but over the next 20 minutes as Lena holds her, she finds that under Lena’s gentle touch and to the sound of her strong heartbeat, darkness begins to overtake her vision as she drifts into a deep, healing sleep.

Lena leans forward and kisses Kara’s eyelids gently and then her tear streaked cheeks. Lena doesn’t even think Kara realised she was crying as she talked about Non. Lena will have to speak to Alex about what support the DEO has in place for Kara and for treating PTSD. And Gods help them if they don’t give her the right kinds of answers.

Lena curls around Kara, her arms holding her tightly. Lena is wide awake now, determined to watch over Kara as she sleeps, to keep her nightmares away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos please. The next chapter will hopefully be something lighter.


	4. Taste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena asks Kara about her sense of taste.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has been commenting and leaving kudos. It really does mean a lot. I am so happy to see people enjoying these little conversations.

Kara sits in her usual spot on the designer leather couch in Lena’s office, happily finishing off her last portion of potstickers. Lena watches indulgently as her girlfriend hums and makes tiny happy moaning sounds as she pops one little steam-fried dumpling into her mouth after another.

“If I wasn’t so sure you loved me, I might actually be jealous of how absorbed you are in eating those potstickers darling,” Lena teases.

Kara pauses mid-bite and then slowly, exaggeratedly she bites off a chunk of the dumpling revealing the filling. She chews methodically and makes a pantomimed face of deep thought. Her lips purse together, a finger from her free hand tapping against her chin and her brows scrunch as she chews methodically.

Kara swallows slowly and Lena can’t help her eyes following the slow rippling muscles of Kara’s throat.

Kara smiles innocently, “While the potsticker is perhaps one of the greatest culinary delights in the known universe, I can emphatically state that you still taste better Lena.”

Lena sucks in a breath and blushes as Kara smiles saucily. The rare innuendo catching Lena off guard.

Kara winks and Lena rolls her eyes as she tries frantically to keep her heart rate under control.

“I would certainly hope you love me more than cheap pork filled pastry,” Lena retorts weakly.

“Hey!” Kara gasps in insult. She turns to her half eaten potsticker and whispers conspiratorially to it, “Don’t listen to the mean lady. You aren’t cheap. A short date but never cheap, and you are delicious. The Kale eating philistine I call my girlfriend knows nothing of true taste.”

Lena chuckles, “Yes, having eaten in restaurants all over the world and feasted with royalty, my palette is naught but a novice in distinguishing good food from greasy take away.”

Kara frowns lightly at Lena’s sarcasm before returning her gaze to her potsticker, “Don’t listen to her. You aren’t greasy. You are perfectly fluffy and lightly crunchy on your cute, golden brown bottom.”

Before Lena can retort again, Kara proceeds to lick the remaining dumpling filling out of the potsticker in one deft stroke of her tongue and then drops the empty half shell of the dumpling into her mouth.

Lena’s mouth has gone dry and a sudden heat has begun to build in the pit of her stomach, sending tendrils of desire lower between her legs. The frankly indecent image of Kara licking the contents out of the dumpling burns into her mind’s eye and should be illegal.

Lena shifts on the edge of the sofa, and seeing Kara’s suddenly triumphant and lascivious look at what is surely the sound of her pounding heart she attempts a distraction, “What do they taste like to you? Is your sense of taste different because you are Kryptonian, maybe they’re like catnip to Kryptonians or something?”

Kara is brought up short by the question and she furrows her brows in thought. With deft chopsticks she lifts a new potsticker from the box on the coffee table and examines it as she thinks.

“Kryptonian tongues have more taste buds for sure. I heard human’s only have like 10,000 but we probably have about a third more than that. Our food was grown in vast hydroponic labs because of the ecological destruction of Krypton and our meat was grown too. Kryptonian food contained all the necessary minerals, vitamins and nutrients we needed by design and so there was a very limited variety of produce and meals, simply because everything was rationed and nothing that was produced really had a vastly different nutritional profile. Our scientists had removed our ancestral genes that made us crave high fat, salt or sugary foods.”

Lena interrupts with a snort and raised eyebrow, “So your love of all things fatty and sweet is come by honestly and can’t be blamed on evolutionary genetics as humanity can?”

Kara narrows her eyes and tilts her head back proudly with an arrogant air, “Kryptonians were never obese as humans often are. Our superior digestive system, scientifically engineered and rationed food and removal of redundant genes for excessive eating of previously scarce food types meant we had the act of eating and nutrition down to an efficient art form.”

Lena cocks a brow in disbelief, “No offense Kara but that sounds a bit…bland, boring?”

Kara droops instantly and a bashful look overtakes her face. She gobbles down the potsticker she had been holding and fishes out another.

Kara contemplates her new potsticker and sighs, “I admit it was a bit. Kryptonian society saw excessive amounts of time wasted on nutrition as inefficient but our increased taste buds meant that we did take pleasure in eating. A pleasure which was severely curtailed by the lack of variety in our manufactured and produced foods. To alleviate the issue the science guild had created food droppers. A kind of liquid artificial flavouring that came in hundreds of varieties and which could be added to standard food stuffs to please our taste buds and add more variety. Even then, it wasn’t until I came to earth that I realized how much we had lost by engineering our food to an efficient process.”

Kara bites into her dumpling and chews with a small moan of pleasure.

Lena shuffles forward intrigued, “Food here tastes that much better?”

Kara nods emphatically, “With a red sun our plant life wasn’t as ecologically diverse nor as productive for food crops, even before we totally destroyed the ecology of Krypton. I had traveled to lots of other planets with my dad and while their food was good, it was often as homogenous as ours. I think it is a result of most FTL species having unified governments and cultures. The diversity of food seems to get lost because of ecological pressures on produce, demands for efficiency and with forced mainstreaming of cultures there is a homogenizing of tastes. Kryptonian records showed more diversity of food when we first began trading with and traveling to other planets, but then it went in the opposite direction when isolationism returned to the fore. It was like our people's patriotism and speciesism meant they were willing to accept the reduced variety of produce and flavors available on our dying world. Food preparation wasn't part of our sponsored education and was usually the work of machines or Kelex. There wasn't a culinary guild because food manufacturing and nutrition was the preserve of the science guild. That meant nutrition and efficiency was important, not complex taste or innovation. The amount of different cuisines here on earth is mind blowing and the amount of time that humans are willing to spend preparing a single dish, the number of ingredients you will combine, the fact people dedicate their lives to experimenting and innovating with food…it is spectacularly inefficient and delicious.”

Lena laughs heartily, “Glad to know we primitive human’s do something better.”

Kara smiles and nibbles on her potsticker.

Lena watches Kara with a singular focus, “So what makes the potsticker so good. What are you tasting that I am missing? It just tastes like soft dough, grease and spicy pork to me.”

Kara’s eyes widen as though Lena has committed sacrilege, “Oh Lena no! Your poor human tongue probably can’t decipher it all but the potsticker is amazing. Like, my tongue is about an inch longer than a humans, I am sure you have notice, “ Kara pauses to wink and Lena goes bright red as she chokes on air.

Kara carries on as though Lena isn’t dying of embarrassment, “And because of the increased size, combined with more mobile muscles, all those extra taste buds and no Frenulum to restrict the movement of my tongue, something else I am sure you have noticed,” Lena had just been recovering when she is thrown again into fits of coughing and blushing.

Kara continues as though she doesn’t see what she is doing to Lena, “- I can move my tongue around my food to really manipulate the bolus and to taste every aspect and ingredient of it. The humble potsticker is a revelation to my taste buds. I can taste each individual flavour and feel each ingredients texture singularly and as they compliment each other. The soft dumpling exterior is moist on one side and crispy on the other. I can taste the subtle peanut oil it was fried in, the salty, meatiness of the pork, the punch of the rice wine vinegar being cut by the salty soy sauce, pungent garlic, fresh aromatic green onions, umami mushrooms, crunchy fresh cabbage and the heat from shredded ginger. I can taste it all as it interacts on my tongue, a symphony of flavour and all of it real, authentic and fresh. So different from anything we had on Krypton. Admittedly some of them taste better than others. Like, I never get the Chinese from that nice place down on 101st street because their main chef uses artificial lemon soap to wash his hands in the kitchen and the taste of it taints all of the food he handles. Too subtle for a human to notice but I do. There is a reason I only eat from certain places. I can literally taste if hygiene isn’t up to scratch, the ingredients aren’t what they say or the food is past its best. That little problem aside…food here on earth tastes amazing.”

Kara plops the last potsticker on her tongue and flicks it into her mouth, chewing lasciviously.

Lena swallows hard, her breathing a little erratic still, “You know Kara, I think I have a whole new appreciation for the humble potsticker,” Lena whimpers.


	5. Smell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena asks Kara about her sense of smell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something a little bit silly but which I couldn't help but consider as being a real issue for Kara. I imagine her family and friends have to pretend to ignore just how powerful some of her senses are; such as scent and hearing. They have to know that Kara is aware of some things that they would rather she not be, I imagine it is like a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy.

Lena is feeling uncomfortably full as she steps out of the new Italian restaurant that she and Kara have just had their date night in.

Lena knows that she didn’t really need to eat the Tiramisu but it just looked so damn delicious and she has been being so good lately eating her salads and politely declining the glorious food temptations that Kara almost daily presents to her.

Kara steps up beside Lena, a contented sigh escaping her lips as she pats her washboard abs in satisfaction. After the truly huge amount of food Kara has just packed away, it is patently unfair that she looks like a decathlete in prime condition. Kara slips her hand into Lena’s and swings it gently, “That was delicious. We should definitely go there again,” Kara sighs contentedly.

Lena laughs, “We’re no even three full steps from the door and you’re already planning a return trip?”

Kara pouts adorably, “We have to support local business Lena. 60% of new restaurants fail in their first year. We must support such a great little place and Mrs. Bianchi was so nice. It would be lovely to have a traditional family run Italian place on your doorstep.”

Lena rolls her eyes indulgently, “I am sure this bout of sudden civic mindedness and community support has nothing to do with your full belly or the way Mrs. Bianchi kept bringing you more breadsticks, extra sides of fried zucchini, and stacked an extra two cannoli onto the standard portion of your dessert because, and I quote, ‘ah bella, so pretty but too skinny.’”

Kara blushes and her head ducks. She squeezes Lena’s hand gently before murmuring, “She was nice to you too. That was more important. They treated you right.”

Lena pauses as her mind reviews their meal and she realises Kara is right. Mrs. Bianchi had not even batted an eye at having the Luthor CEO in her restaurant. She had fussed and been hospitable. She had joined Kara in lightly bullying Lena into having the Lasagne she wanted rather than the salad for her main and then indulgently persuaded her to have dessert too. All the while, the usual hatred, low level hostility and fear of someone tampering with her food when she eats out was missing. Lena realises that despite feeling about as elegant as a blimp with all of the food she has eaten, she feels quite light in spirit. Oddly buoyant.

Lena squeezes Kara’s hand in thanks and acknowledgement of her care, “Yes, it was a lovely meal and Mrs.Bianchi was very welcoming. Perhaps we will come back in a week or two, take Alex and Kelly too?”

Kara woops like a child and fist pumps, “Yes!”

Lena laughs but is cut short as she shifts uncomfortably. The waistband of her skirt feeling decidedly uncomfortable as she winces.

Kara notices of course as she shoots Lena a concerned look.

“Perhaps we could walk back to mine instead of calling Kenneth. It’s only a few blocks and I could use the walk to help my food go down.”

“Okey-doke!” Kara agrees brightly.

Lena immediately takes a step to the left and Kara to the right. The two women snapping back to each other as their joined hands pull them up short.

“It’s this way Kara,” Lena says pointing in her direction and giving Kara a confused look.

Kara shifts uncomfortably, “I was thinking we would go this way instead. It is only slightly longer, and we get to cut through the little memorial park.”

Lena is about to argue when she notices the almost pleading look in Kara’s ocean blue eyes.

“Alright, I suppose cutting through the park would be nice this time of evening,” Lena hesitantly agrees.

Kara sighs in relief and Lena’s curiosity and concern increases, “Thanks Lena,” Kara replies earnestly.

As they walk in companionable silence, their joined hands swaying slightly between them, Lena reviews the journey back to her apartment along the route she would have taken.

As far as her mind can recall there are no landmarks associated with any Supergirl fights which may be upsetting. Nor are there any areas where past Supergirl saves occurred but did not have happy endings. Lena knows for example that Kara prefers to avoid the intersection between Leeson Avenue and North 18th street ever since she flew a young mother involved in a pedestrian on motor vehicle collision to the hospital and the unfortunate woman did not survive. Kara still feels irrationally guilty and sad every time they pass it.

As the couple cut through the park Lena spots an empty bench and with a gentle tug she persuades Kara to take a seat with her.

Kara sighs as she leans back on the bench, “Just ask Lena. I can hear your mind whirring from here.”

Lena blushes and gives an indignant sniff, “I would accuse you of exaggerating but I know how keen you hearing is so I will not dignify that with a response and will just ask: why did you not want to take the shorter route back to my apartment?”

Kara sighs and twists to face Lena head on, “The other way, it would take us past the National City Poet Plaza. There is a public restroom cube there.”

Kara stares at Lena like she is meant to understand the profound nature of this revelation. A light bulb should be going off, but Lena is remarkably without insight as to why the thought of passing Poet Plaza or its public restroom would be a big deal for Kara.

Kara stares at Lena in vein as her girlfriend’s mind tries desperately to find the pieces she is missing to make sense of this puzzling statement.

Kara cringes slightly and she awkwardly pulls at her hair before rubbing the back of her neck and averting her eyes from Lena. “You said I have keen hearing Lena. My hearing isn’t the only keen sense.”

Lena’s mind pauses as she instinctively runs the five senses past the idea of walking past Poet Plaza and the public restroom. Lena’s eyes widen in surprise and hesitant realisation, “You are avoiding the smell?”

Kara nods with a blush.

Lena’s mind is aflutter as she tries to remember every time she has used the bathroom when Kara has been nearby. She has flushed, cleaned the space and opened windows. She has a cleaner who comes three times a week.

Lena blushes slightly as she tries to fight down mortification. It really should have been a logical deduction. Lena has been consistently wearing milder perfumes that Kara approves of and using scentless soaps and detergents ever since she began to suspect Kara’s identity. The sneezing fit of 2019 when Lena switched to Christian Dior Balade Sauvage had put paid to Lena’s desire to wear the latest trending fragrances. Being told she smelled like a pungent tropical rainforest wasn’t what she had been going for.

“I thought you were able to filter out most smells in public?” Lena remarked.

Kara grimaces again, “I can usually, but some smells are just too strong and dominate an area. I try to avoid going too close to public restrooms when I can. The mix of body odour, human waste, stagnant water, sexual fluids, and sanitary products…is just overwhelming. Even in Catco I avoid the restrooms and I don’t just take the stairs because I am faster than the elevator, I do it because so many people in a confined space can be a bit much. If I get myself in the right head space, or am in the middle of a conversation I can usually ignore it. Have you not noticed our usual booth at the Alien bar is right between a window and at the perfect angle so that when the bar door opens we get a hit by a gust of fresh air? It helps me manage with so many scents from various species, foods and drinks in one place.”

Lena cocks her head as she pictures the alien bar, “I had just assumed it was Alex and J’onn being paranoid. They would naturally want eyes on the door and the blacked-out windows offered a secondary exit point.”

Kara smiles happily, “That probably has something to do with it too but usually when we go somewhere in public Alex picks a seat that puts us near some form of ventilation so I can get the relief of some fresh, or at least different, air to clean my nose with.”

Lena hums and ruminates on the idea that Kara’s sense of smell is far stronger than she had realised, “I didn’t know you were always being overcome by so many scents or that you could distinguish so many…you said sexual fluid?”

Kara blushes for a moment before a flirty smile overtakes her face, “Oh yes Miss Luthor, I can smell sexual fluids.”

Lena can feel her blush rise brilliantly up her neck as she suddenly flashes back to all the embarrassing times that Kara has made her wet. Especially in the early days of their relationship when Kara wasn’t ready to take those steps into being physically intimate. Lena had been hot and bothered on numerous occasions and been so sure that she had hidden her rampant need and desire so well behind her Luthor mask of control and cool.

Lena ducks her head into her hands, mortified beyond belief, “You mean, you always knew when I…You could smell…” Lena mumbles. Completely unable to hide her embarrassment.

Kara pulls Lena’s hands from her face, “Shh, please don’t be embarrassed. This is why I don’t tell people this usually or the people in my life who know, try to pretend like it isn’t a reality.”

Lena groans but then feels marginally better as a thought occurs to her, “You mean you know when everyone around you is…”

Kara blushes deeper and cuts Lena off, “If I’m not really focused on something else. There is a reason I try to stay busy or to have delicious smelling food around me all the time. I don’t want to know when my sister, my friends, my work colleagues and all in sundry are aroused, menstruating, having a sneaky fart or have switched body wash. The scents are overwhelming and usually blend together into a nose blind soup so long as I don’t focus on them. Being American has the added benefit of allowing me to carry a cup of coffee almost anywhere at all times and the pungent smell of it really helps if I forget myself or happen across something particularly…odious.”

Lena nods hesitantly as she tries to control her blush, “Ok. I will adopt the same approach. Try to help you out subtly when I can. Avoid smelly places, sit near ventilation in public spaces and the rest of the time pretend I don’t realise that you have a sense of smell that a German Shepherd would be jealous of.”

Kara snorts and snuggles closer to Lena on the bench, happy to ignore this little revelation as much as possible. 


	6. Hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena asks about Kryptonian hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some aspects of this question refer back to explanations given as part of my head cannon in the story: “Alien to each other.” 
> 
> This is the last chapter I had fully written in advance. The next chapters will deal with: The predetermination of occupations on Krypton, the Choosing of a suitable life partner, Kryptonian holidays, Kryptonian religion, Physical clumsiness and finally speaking Kryptonian.
> 
> These chapters are in the works but it will be a week at least before I update again as I have that horrible thing called a job with deadlines and stuff to deal with at the minute.

Lena lies happily across Kara on the couch as they watch Netflix.

Her hand idly plays with the feathery soft ends of Kara’s hair.

“Kara?” Lena asks in her curious, innocent voice.

Lena feels Kara’s amused sigh as her chest rises and falls beneath her.

“Yes Lena? What is it you want to know this time?” Kara asks indulgently. By now, Kara is well used to Lena’s curious inquiries about some oddity of her species or history that she can almost hear her mind constructing her question before that hesitant tone asks for answers as though still afraid Kara will rebuff her or castigate her for seeking to know her better.

Lena blushes and ducks her head back into the hollow of Kara’s neck, tucked securely beneath her chin.

“You don’t have to answer, but I was wondering…” Lena begins timidly.

Kara intervenes to bolster Lena’s confidence, hating to see her vivacious and intelligent girlfriend afraid to sate her curiosity, “You can ask me anything Lena, there are no more secrets here. Not ever.”

Lena feels her lips tilt into a small smile and she angles her head to brush a kiss across Kara’s clavicle.

“I was wondering about Kryptonians and hair. You and Kal-El both have luscious locks, eyebrows and eyelashes. Those seem like redundant characteristics that the matrix and your evolution would have adapted against. I notice that you don’t have the typical fine covering of mammalian body hair anywhere else on your body, like your arms, legs, fingers, armpits and none at all between your legs. Why is that? And how do you cut it?”

Kara smiles, “Ah, there is quite a bit to unpack there. Let’s see. I assume you are comparing our hair to our nails and how our evolution pushed their redundancy, change and reduction in size?”

Lena nods without further comment.

Kara’s brows scrunch as she recalls information long past from her childhood classes, “It is similar. I know that as a species we evolved out of body hair in the typical mammalian sense a long time ago, even before we began pushing our evolution with the codex and the matrix. Even before we began large scale genetic engineering of our people it was a recessive trait to still grow hair follicles on our limbs and beneath our arms. As for between our legs? Well, that I think is to do with the universal standardisation of the Kryptonian species when the council decided to make reproduction more efficient. That was perhaps the first species wide adaptation that the Council mandated and within a single generation all Kryptonians had universal reproductive organs and genitalia and as such, no hair between our legs. If we were always hairless around our genitals, I don’t know. That modification happened so long ago that it’s not something I could even guess at.”

Lena hums thoughtfully, “That kind of matches up with what I thought but what about your hair, eyebrows and eyelashes?”

Kara shifts slightly, “That is a more complex issue. There were some Houses on Krypton who decided to do away with hair altogether. Particularly in the military guilds. I remember the first time I met a member of House Gred, I actually thought them aliens. They had manipulated the programming of their family bloodlines to do away with hair. The tops of their head were slightly larger as they had compensated for potential heat loss by an extra lymph layer under the crown of their heads, restricting blood vessel development and modifying the skin of the scalp to be more robust. Their eyebrows were removed and as such they lacked some of the muscles around the ocular orbit needed to move eyebrows. They added an extra transparent protective eyelid across their eye to protect from dust and damage, a bit like earth crocodiles. For the military guild they were sensible adaptations. Less hair meant less maintenance and less risk of it being used as a hand hold in combat. The layer of lymp and tougher skin gave them more resistance to blows to the head and reduced blood vessels while reducing heat loss also reduced the number of bleeding head wounds when training. The extra eyelid gave snipers and ground troops an added layer of protection. The lack of eyebrows made determining emotional responses harder and created a social barrier.My father said it made communicating with thise Houses harder as you couldn’t always read their facial responses in the same way you could a more standard Kryptonian. Personally I always thought the Houses that went that route looked weird but the one time I expressed that view as a child my father chastised me for being narrow minded and placing vanity above the practical or intellectual needs of Krypton.”

The thought of a single species with such inherent and drastic physical changes blows Lena’s mind. By the sounds of it, you could have looked at a member of House Gred and House El and been incapable of telling they were the same species.

Lena snuggles deeper into Kara’s arms and crushes a kiss across her opposite clavicle as her hands rise to gently massage Kara’s scalp. “I have to admit honey, that while I am sure I would love you for the wonderful person you are and how amazingly you treat me…I am glad you’re not a bald, eyebrow-less alien. I much prefer my sexy golden haired goddess of an alien, even if that makes me a superficially narrow minded primitive.”

Kara laughs heartily and sits up to pull Lena into a searing kiss. When she draws back to leave a slightly dazed Lena to catch her breath, Kara smiles, “I am certainly glad I didn’t have to wear a wig or fake eyebrows to fit into humanity. Being an alien teenager was hard enough.”

Lena regains her bearings and pecks a kiss to Kara’s lips as she weaves her hands through her flaxen hair, “So what about your hair?”

Kara shrugs, “I was designed for the Science Guild and the House of El thought it was ‘an inefficient use of resources to make superficial changes to a design that is perfectly serviceable.’ Personally, I think it’s crap. My uncle Jor and father Zor looked remarkably alike and all members of the House of El have the same shade of blue eyes. I think there was a bit of subconscious vanity involved. My hair is part of my genetic programming, it grows extremely slowly unless I lose hair in a fight. In about a year my hair will grow less than a quarter of an inch and then like Kal-El I have an electric razor coated with Kryptonite I can use to trim it. He decided coating scissors would be too dangerous.”

Kara rolls her eyes and Lena huffs at Kal-El’s caution but internally Lena is relieved that there are no Kryptonite coated scissors lying around.

Lena’s brows furrow, “You said your hair grows slowly unless you lose some. How does that work?”

Kara’s face scrunches, “I think it’s a genetic adaptation. Well, I assume it is. If I lose hair in a fight then it grows back to about shoulder length in less than a week. I vaguely remember my father talking about the matrix setting pre-determined follicle lengths. Remember, Kryptonians didn’t alter their bodies with dyes, tattoos, piercings or superficial changes. Our Houses designed us with the Matrix and the Codex. We were physical representations of the ideal for our House. If I had cut my hair to shorter than the genetic determined rapid growth length that kicked in when I was 3, or tried to dye my hair, or pierce my ears; it would have been a scandal. That would be a defilement of the physical representation of the House of El, an insult to my society and to my father and mother. Like saying they had done a poor job of designing me to be the best for Krypton.”

Lena can barely fathom it. The very idea of so much genetic control over what a person looked like is hundreds of years beyond human reach and quite frankly she is often glad for it. The eugenic implications of some of the Kryptonian practices are a bit freaky.

Lena relaxes for a moment but then a thought occurs to her, “What about Kal-El? He grew a beard after he disappeared that one time didn’t he? Is facial hair different or is Kal-El defiling Kryptonian custom on the daily by getting rid of his beard?”

Kara grimaces visibly and Lena is intrigued, “You forget. Kal-El was the first natural conception and birth on Krypton in living memory. He wasn’t designed but is a conglomeration of random chance. I know that neither my dad nor uncle Jor had any facial hair, but Kal’s natural conception I think, means he has the genes to grow his hair like a human. I know his hair grows pretty fast too, he goes back to Smallville for Ma-Kent to trim it every three months or so. As for the beard, well he does this stupid trick shot thing with a mirror and his heat vision. Stinks up the whole bathroom with the smell of burning hair every morning. I don’t know why he won’t just get the Kal-Ex to coat a few razor blades with Kryptonite. I think he like showing off.”

Lena can’t help but snicker, “Your face is a picture. You look so scandalised and a little bit disgusted when you say Kal-El is a conglomeration of random chance. I will have you know that I was a conglomeration of random chance too dear. 100% naturally conceived and born.”

Kara’s eyes soften and Lena’s snicker is abruptly cut off by soft, chaste kisses and deep soulful eyes staring into her very soul.

“No one could design you Lena. You’re absolutely unique in the universe. Beautiful, exceptional, and irreplaceable. A one off, made just for me by the grace of Rao: my salvation.”

Lena can feel the tears build in her eyes and instead of trying to find the words she pours her love into kissing Kara, her hands tightly fisted into her genetically engineered hair. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. I hope you are enjoying this series. Hopefully I will have some more chapters up soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and please drop a comment or a question.


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